They were simple, earnest people, those early Victorians, and had not yet learnt the trick of avoiding disturbing thoughts and sights.

Higher than the beasts, lower than the angels, stuck in our idiot Eden.

And it was a most remarkable, a most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse had looked at me.

The object of the novelist is to keep the reader entirely oblivious of the fact that the author exists - even of the fact he is reading a book.

Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.

If you're going to have a character appear in a story long enough to sell a newspaper, he'd better be real enough that you can smell his breath.

What the artist wishes to do — as far as you are concerned — is to take you out of yourself. As far as he is concerned, he wishes to express himself.

Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.

Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing.

Pride and reserve are not the only things in life; perhaps they are not even the best things. But if they happen to be your particular virtues you will go all to pieces if you let them go.

The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!

I honestly turned to writing because I didn't know what else to do, and because a friend had gently suggested it.

Looking for love is tricky business, like whipping a carousel horse.

Have you ever seen people so ugly that you have to get someone else to verify it?

I wanted to be a vet when I was little, so it never really dawned on me that acting was my career, it sort of chose me more than I chose it.

The symbolism in any kind of dance allows for recall, reenactment, and reexperience of events for purposes of resisting, reducing, transforming, and escaping stress.

Perhaps nothing was ever “meant to be.” There was just life, and right now, and doing your best. Being a bit “bendy.

I don't want to be an English actor doing the greatest American accent you've ever heard. I want to be an American doing nothing.

Do not pretend - be. Do not promise - act. Do not dream - realize.

The best filmmakers, I think, have always had very narrow frameworks for their stories, and then they can go deeply, rather than skimming the surface.

If you put in the work, put in the time, put in the effort, you're going to reap the benefits.